Lewis Capaldi is no casual Billie Eilish fan. The Scottish singer-songwriter likened her sound to “being punched in the face in the best fucking way possible … Like being assaulted by a big marshmallow man!”

Capaldi first heard “When the Party’s Over” when it was released on Spotify last fall (or, of course, during the dramatic Riverdale Season Three finale). “The harmonies in it and all the fucking layered vocals and stuff just blew me away,” Capaldi says. “I just think it’s fucking incredible.” He recalls how stunned he was when he found out she was only a teenager. “The thing is, I’m not old,” Capaldi says. “I’m very young. But it’s just annoying to see people even younger with just exceeding amounts of talent. It’s fucking mental.”

Related

“If people ask me what my music sounds like, I usually say, ‘Imagine a girl but she’s a guy, and a lot less talented,'” Capaldi joked. He first performed on stage at a cabaret when he was four-years-old. “I went onstage and asked if I could sing ‘We Will Rock You’ by Queen,” he says. “Even at that age, there was just something about it that I realized that I liked playing in front of people. I was showing off. I was basically a little prick.”

Capaldi makes a point to say that he despises rap covers done acoustic: “There are too many white guys with acoustic guitars trying to make these rap songs slow, emotional ballads,” he says. “Fuck off!” In order to cover Eilish’s “When the Party’s Over,” he stripped it down, adding piano chords and guitar. He cited Phoebe Bridgers as an influence on the cover, who did an acoustic rendition of the Cure’s “Friday I’m in Love.” “What we wanted to do with the piano was have that sparse feeling Phoebe Bridgers had on hers,” he says. “Basically what I’m saying is: we copied Phoebe Bridgers.”

You can hear Capaldi’s cover of “When the Party’s Over” here. Hopefully Noel Gallagher doesn’t call him a “daftie” again.